Human-made climate change has been part of the permanent exhibition at the Technisches Museum Wien (TMW) since last week. Under the title "Climate. Knowledge. Action!", the museum in Vienna's Penzing district offers an at times impressive insight into what is perhaps the biggest topic of our time. The massive human impact on the planet becomes tangible above all from space — and here the TMW quite literally lays the facts on the table, including a high-tech one.
In collaboration with the European Space Agency ESA, led by Tyrolean Josef Aschbacher, and Linz-based Ars Electronica Solutions, two media stations have been created, for instance, where visitors aged primarily twelve to fourteen and above can get to grips in an innovative, hands-on way with how high technology — in the form of numerous Earth observation satellites — can make the current state of the planet and its changes visible. The wealth of information is projected in a visually appealing way onto a 3D elevation model of the Vienna area, milled from wood — with a swipe, you can see exactly how soil moisture or agricultural land use can be measured and read here. TMW Director General Peter Aufreiter emphasised to journalists on Wednesday that no second setup of this kind exists outside of ESA facilities.
Elsewhere, a touchscreen table can display, among other things, the temperature trends in the federal capital over the past 40 years. This is just as concerning as, for example, the development of Austria's largest glacier — the Pasterze at the Grossglockner — or that of the vast ice sheets of Greenland and the Amazon rainforests.
Through the ESA Earth observation programme, for instance, we are very well informed about what is currently happening and in which direction things could head without effective countermeasures. How contested these actually disarmingly clear findings still are, and how this can also be explained from a psychological perspective, is likewise part of the new exhibition on the ground floor of the TMW. At the presentation of the first part of the comprehensive overhaul of his museum's permanent exhibitions — which will continue until 2026 — Aufreiter saw us humans not merely in a dilemma but in a "tri-lemma".
We are simultaneously "victim, witness, and perpetrator", said Aufreiter. All of this should be addressed in "Climate. Knowledge. Action!" without drifting into a hopeless, bleak dystopia. It's also about highlighting options for action and encouraging people to act, explained project leader Gudrun Ratzinger in conversation with APA.
Before visitors reach that point at the end of the largely quite interactive exhibition, however, there's a special technical treat in store: the "Future Simulator". Inside, visitors are confronted by an AI with all manner of questions about climate change. The movements of group members within the room-within-a-room are automatically tracked, allowing real-time voting in the style of the children's TV show "1, 2 or 3". This then leads into various future scenarios which, supported by the CCCA, reflect the current state of scientific knowledge.
Speaking of science: it makes its voice heard through numerous video interviews with Aschbacher and meteorologist Helga Kromp-Kolb, among others, and runs like a common thread throughout the exhibition, at the entrance to which a film installation by stylistically unmistakeable Viennese documentary filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter can be seen. One of the new roles of modern museums is, after all, the dismantling of science scepticism — a phenomenon that is quite widespread, particularly with regard to climate change, in politics and among the general public.
Unlike many other actors in society, museums occupy a special position here: as one of the few institutions, museums are still afforded considerable "credibility" even today. For this reason, the aim is to "lay the facts on the table" and actively participate in the lively public discourse, said Aufreiter.
INFO: https://www.technischesmuseum.at/ausstellung/klima_wissen_handeln
